Bäbytalk

If the record sounds like a remarkably authentic reconstruction of the wide-eyed, freewheeling energy that attended the lo-fi British post-punk of the early 1980s, it's because Alig Pearce is no newcomer to this music-without-borders thing.

Were it not for some very modern production values, Idol Fodder's Bäbytalk would sound like a lost relic from the heady days of post-punk, before the cultural moment's unruly stylistic improvisation crystallized into a genre defined by upstroked guitars and neo-Marxist lyrics. It's a madcap hybrid of jump-rope pop and baroque chamber music that draws a zigzagging line between Arthur Russell, Young Marble Giants, the Homosexuals, and outlying points. And it does this while remaining direly infectious: no mean feat, in a lineage prone to prioritizing experimentation over user-friendliness.

If the record sounds like a remarkably authentic reconstruction of the wide-eyed, freewheeling energy that attended the lo-fi British post-punk of the early 1980s, it's because Alig Pearce is no newcomer to this music-without-borders thing. During post-punk's first indefinable wave, he was always on the periphery of the zeitgeist with his rotating ensemble Family Fodder. He collaborated with This Heat and recorded in their practice space. He released an early single on Small Wonder, the same label that first issued Bauhaus's "Bela Lugosi's Dead" and the Cure's "Killing an Arab". He flipped the mandatory dub and tape-manipulation experiments on Family Fodder's debut, Monkey Banana Kitchen, and beyond the mandatory reunions, they were done by 1983.

That Idol Fodder unites Pearce with Darlini Singh-Kaul, the daughter of Family Fodder vocalist Dominique Levillain, roots the album even more firmly in Cold War-era aesthetic rebellion. While Alig has remained active over the past couple of decades, Idol Fodder most overtly picks up where Family Fodder left off, exploring ways to make the baroque go pop. Bäbytalk is dominated by peppy sing-song vocals and deep, dramatic string rhythms, but each track delights with its creative deployment of these cornerstones and surprising embellishments. On "The Onliest Thing", Pearce and Singh-Kaul's twinned vocal lines ride a steadily sawing, bowed chord, and beyond an electric guitar bridge and some handclaps, all of the track's considerable interest resides in the contrast between the jackbooted strings and the fluid vocal line. It complements, yet in no way predicts, the next track, "Earlimusix", an inward-spiraling meditation for reed instruments. This is a band that knows how to milk one good idea for all of its undiluted worth.

Bäbytalk is the sixth installment in the Pregnancy Series co-curated by Slender Means and States Rights, and its baby-centric theme represents a literal take on the series' ambiguous concept. Idol Fodder thankfully avoid "wittle bitty snoogy ookums" kinda talk, but they come close on "The Onliest Thing", a pledge of fealty to a newborn. The iron-banded durability of the track saves it from undue preciousness, and while the baby-theme isn't developed that interestingly, it never gets in the way of the diverse, sharp songwriting. "Strangest Games" is a jet-black noir for creeping percussion, funerary vocals, and gloaming strings flecked with reversed glissandos; hot on its heels is "Infamy", a tumbling, crispy-fried pop rock ditty. Singh-Kaul's bouncing-ball vocal melody on "Analyze my Life?" finds a perfect analogue in a robust jew's harp rhythm, and on "Death and the Maiden", Pearce sounds like Stuart Murdoch fronting the Kronos Quartet. The outsized charisma of the musicians holds their stylistic wanderlust fast at the seams, and their steadfast refusal to decide what kind of band they are reminds us of a cultural moment when to do so was considered tantamount to creative suicide.